Feminist Organizing: The Occupation of the Collegian

In the late 1970s, the Letters to the Editor page of the Daily Collegian was often filled with debates about the legitimacy of feminism, the status of the ERA, and rape on campus and in the community. One November, 1978 issue of the newspaper nicely illustrates the tenor of these conversations. Letter titles included: “Women still being raped,” “Student feminists ‘paranoid,’” and “Feminists are angry, not appreciative.”²⁶ Also that fall, Collegian Women’s Editor, Julie Melrose, Women’s Studies major, shared with the newspaper’s readers the benefits of the women’s studies classroom. “Women’s Studies students know that our subject matter is directly relevant to our lives,” she wrote, and “the sexist language and ideas that constantly assault those with feminist consciousness in many classrooms are absent.” In the traditional classroom, she noted, men were free to “think out loud” and present partially formed ideas, while women felt pressure to keep quiet unless they were experts on a subject. Not so in Women's Studies classrooms, which at this point were usually all women. In Melrose’s experience, the sexual tension usually found in co-educational settings was also absent.²⁷In the spring of 1978 the Collegian was also the site of feminist discourse and struggle when university women organized a sit-in in order to gain more coverage of women’s issues in their campus media outlet. Activists, including many women's studies students and one faculty member, occupied the newspaper’s office for a number of days. While their demand for dedicated ad-free women’s pages in every issue was not met, they made national and international news, gaining support from leading feminists, including Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, and French feminist Simone de Beauvoir. Undeterred, the students published their own paper, The Valley Women's Voice, which was distributed monthly in the area.

²⁶ “To the Editor,” Massachusetts Daily Collegian, November 7, 1978, p. 6.

²⁷ Julie Melrose, “A Woman’s Education,” Massachusetts Daily Collegian, September 15, 1978.